Every year, an estimated 10 million girls aged under 18 are married worldwide with little or no say in the matter. That’s more than 25,000 girls every day, or 19 every minute. In the developing world, one in seven girls is married before her 15th birthday and some child brides are as young as eight or nine.

Neither physically nor emotionally ready to become wives and mothers, these girls are at far greater risk of experiencing dangerous complications in pregnancy and childbirth, becoming infected with HIV/AIDS and suffering domestic violence. With little access to education and economic opportunities, they and their families are more likely to live in poverty.

There’s one of the products of very early marriage for girls, fistula.

Each year between 50 000 to 100 000 women worldwide are affected by obstetric fistula, a hole in the birth canal. The development of obstetric fistula is directly linked to one of the major causes of maternal mortality: obstructed labour.

Women who experience obstetric fistula suffer constant incontinence, shame, social segregation and health problems. It is estimated that more than 2 million young women live with untreated obstetric fistula in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The situation is the most critical in NWFP and Baluchistan, where the female literacy rate stands between 3 per cent and 8 per cent. Some government organizations and non-governmental organizations have tried to open formal and informal schools in these areas, but the local landlords, even when they have little or nothing to do with religion or religious parties, oppose such measures, apparently out of fear that people who become literate will cease to follow them with blind faith. Unfortunately, the government has not so far taken any steps to promote literacy or girls= education in these areas. It is even reluctant to help NGOs or other small political or religious parties do the job, because in order to maintain control, it needs the support of these landlords and chieftains who, as members of the two major political parties, are regularly elected to the national assembly.

“I want to go to school to learn but I cannot because my parents do not allow me to do so,” said 9-year old Palwasha, who has visited the biggest city of Pakistan, Karachi, with her parents and seen girls like herself going to school. She lives in a village located in Dir district (NWFP), where education for girls does not exist.

There are more items one could list – violence; rape including gang rape; women punished for being raped while their rapists go free; unequal laws and rights; forced prostitution; street harassment and “Eve teasing”; employment discrimination; workplace harassment; witch hunts.

Comments

I have to point out that women aren’t actually the majority. It’s true for the US but not globally. This is due to a skewed sex ratio at birth, which is accentuated by the practice in countries like India to abort female embryos.

One could also add the labour disparity, and I’m not talking about first world problems. In many of the countries where women have the least access to education and fewest rights or protections, they end up doing the most work.

Women and girls in Third World societies are more likely than men and boys to have less access to technology, education, technical training, land, credit, and basic needs. Historically, women have performed mostly laborious, gender-assigned duties with skills and tools passed down from generation to generation.
[…]
Studies have shown that in developing countries women, especially poor women, work an average of 12 to 18 hours a day compared to an average of 8 to 12 hours a day for men. Among the tasks women perform are subsistence farming, food production and processing, traditional weaving and sewing, soap-making, petty trading, craft-making, baking, shop-keeping, procuring energy fuel and water, household work, payment of children’s school fees, animal care, caring for the elderly, and raising children.

Are the males in those societies contributing anything to their households? Men in wealthier countries are far from perfect (especially because of wage disparity), but at least a “breadwinner” in a one income household is paying for the family’s home, food and education.